Cataloguing a collection for insurance

If you ever need to make an insurance claim, replace a collection after a loss, or hand it on to family, the most useful thing you can have is a clear inventory made before anything goes wrong. An inventory does not set a value on its own — insurers and appraisers do that — but it records what you had, in what condition, so that a valuation has something to work from.

• Title, author, publisher, and year — the basic identity of the edition.
• The printing and any points of issue, so a first printing is not later mistaken for a reprint (see the first-printing guide).
• Condition, and whether the dust jacket is present — the two details that most affect how a copy is later assessed.
• What you paid and when and where you acquired it, kept separate from any later estimate.
• A photo or two of each significant copy, including the spine and any signature or inscription.

Whatever tool you use, make sure you can get the whole inventory out of it as a file you keep — a spreadsheet or backup you can hand to an insurer, an appraiser, or a family member. An inventory that is stranded inside an app you cannot export from is not much use in the moment you actually need it. Keeping a copy somewhere separate from the originals (a cloud drive, or a printout in another building) means a single fire or flood does not take both.